


Titanomachy

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Female Tony Stark, Fix-It of Sorts, Hero Worship, Immortal Tony Stark, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:09:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: The Avengers have been Earth's protectors since the calamitous year 2012, backed by two secretive international organization: SHIELD and Monarch. Helping them is the infamous tech company Stark Industries and their young CEO and lead engineer, Tony Stark.It's Tony they call when they need to track the Tesseract, to study the Sceptre and to understand the Convergence, making her a valuable resource against the extraterrestrial threat of Thanos, but a target for the lesser earth threats.To protect her, Steve calls in a favour with a veteran he met in DC, Bucky Barnes, and has him stationed as her bodyguard. But it doesn't take Bucky long to notice that Tony isn't just eccentric, and he has a sinking feeling that whatever plan she has for stopping Thanos doesn't actually involve technology.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 160





	1. Awoken Beasts

"I was engaged to Howard Stark's son, Gregory." She explained, leaning over the railing and absorbing New York's evening skyline. "We were going to get married in a week, but we had one last thing for the company before we were officially on vacation: a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan. As the lead engineer, I was there to run it, Gregory to sell it. And we had. 

"On the way back to Kandahar, convoy was attacked. I spent three months in Afghanistan, prisoner to the Ten Rings. I escaped, and when I returned home, I was alone. Gregory had died in the attack. 

"If I had to guess the old man's motives, I would say he was desperate. He was alone, and I was alone. He had no one else he trusted, and I already ran his R&D department. I changed my name to Stark and he handed me the reigns of his company. It was only a few years later the old man died, and I become the last man standing."

Her gaze honed in on the bay, and she looked out as though she could see something no one else could. Her blue eyes matched the light of her chestpiece, though he probably imagined the way that they glowed. 

"The Reactor keeps the shrapnel away from my heart." She continued. "The other soul with me in that cave didn't survive either. I'm starting to think it's a trend.

"But there's been plenty of time before now, and there'll be plenty of time after. We've just gotta hope that whoever this Thanos is, and whatever he wants, he isn't able to find."

* * *

Bucky dropped the weights and grabbed his phone, trying to click the answer button before realizing he was using his left hand and it didn't actually move.

"Fuck."

He switched hands, putting it on speaker. "Are we breaking into another base and kidnapping office temps again, Rogers?"

Steve snorted on the other end of the line. "Not exactly, Buck. This is a little bit different."

"Oh God." He towelled himself down, debating hanging up. Steve would just call again, though. "What now?"

"I need a favour."

"The sun also rose this morning, fancy that."

"There's a threat coming to earth we know next to nothing about." Steve valiantly carried on. "Thor says he's called the Destroyer of Worlds and that he's on his way here."

"I'm only hearing good news."

"We've got a lab rat who's taking care of the items he's after - or so Thor believes - and she needs protection."

"From an alien invasion? I'm a veteran, Steve, but I'm not a space marine."

"We're more concerned that while we're preoccupied, human threats will still come for her. She needs to be protected, and I don't know anyone better for the job."

"Fuckin' Christ, Rogers."

"She lives in Malibu and New York - I promise, you'll only travel in style. She'll take care of you. And pay off all your hospital bills."

"I don't need charity."

"It's payment, Bucky. Don't be an ass."

"Hardwired. I'm a soldier."

"Then you'll do it?"

"Now where did you get that impression?"

"Great! A driver will be there tomorrow at ten to collect you. Skip town and I'll handcuff you to her myself."

"I feel better about this already."

"Perfect. See you soon, Bucky." And Steve hung up. 

"Motherfucker." He muttered. 

| | | 

The driver was a prompt and jolly man by the name of Happy, and it didn't take long from his flat in Brooklyn to reach the place his new ward apparently lived. 

"She bangin' the boss?" He muttered, looking up at Stark Tower.

Happy didn't look pleased at the comment, but the redhead that offered him a sharp (and strong, ouch) handshake only smiled. "I suppose she does masturbate. Follow me, Sgt. Barnes."

He did so, feeling more and more out of place in his ratty clothes and long hair, unable to shave well enough with one hand to be cleanshaven. 

The assistant - Miss Potts - led him to the top floor, where she promptly yelled "Tony!", shoved him out of the elevator and descended back down.

A dark brunette with soul-piercing blue eyes appeared from around a corner, covered in grease and smeared in oil. "Ah, you must be Rogers' babysitter."

"Reporting for duty."

She cracked a grin. "Come on in, then. Make yourself at home."

He dropped his duffel bag next to the couch, glancing around and checking for exits. As had become habit, he readjusted his arm, trying to make it more comfortable. 

"Don't worry, I'll show you around more properly once you're settled-" Her gaze abruptly narrowed as she honed in on his prosthetic and before he could get defensive, she was in his space and pushing up his sleeve. "Eugh. What the fuck is this?"

"My arm." He replied, waspish.

"That's not an arm, that's an abomination." She rotated it, pointing to the Hammer Industries label on the inside of the bicep. "Look at that - revolting. Take off your shirt and follow me. We're taking care of this right away. Disgusting."

"What, exactly, are we doing?" He was too bewildered not to follow her orders. 

"Replacing that garbage. And Steve said he cared about you. Evidently not." Tony tugged him over to a sealed-off room brightly lit and filled with machinery. She shoved him into a chair and started dismantling his arm. 

"You break it, you buy it." He warned. 

As if to prove her point, she maintained eye contact with him as she tossed it into the garbage next to her. "The metal's even subpar. What the fuck use is that thing?"

She buzzed around him hyperactively, like she had too much energy, and finished pulling apart the apparatus that had kept his arm in place, as well as taking measurements of his other arm and torso ratio. 

"I'll have it fabricated in three days." She said to him when she broke surface again, examining his stump. "At least this was done well. I'll be able to attach it and you'll be golden."

"Hold on, attach _what_?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You want a functional left arm?"

"Uh, yes?"

"Then shut up and let me work." She looked up at the ceiling. "J, show our houseguest around and let him in on all our dirty little secrets."

"Of course." A disembodied voice answered. "Follow the blue indicator lights, Sgt. Barnes."

| | | 

As promised, three days later, Bucky was letting this madwoman put him under anesthesia. He woke up on day four with a chrome left arm more than willing to assist him in his efforts to contain his caveman face. 

It solidified his opinion of her as a mad genius and an eccentric weirdo, but he was more than grateful to her nonetheless. 

"I don't expect you to grovel or something." She winked. "I pay union wages to all my workers, no one does anything for free on Stark time."

But Tony was also prone to fits of startling sombre quiet, where she would watch the water, humming to herself. It was strange, but the inexplicable air of loss around her made him feel bad. She was weird, but there was some innate good to her, otherwise she wouldn't bother giving an amputee a free-of-charge miracle. Not to mention how when the hospital argued with her over his shitty prosthetic, she hung up the phone angrily, bought the hospital, forgave the debt and had the clerk who'd been an asshole fired. 

"I know the fucking market price." She muttered after she hung up with her soon-to-be-former administration staff. "Jackass."

Tony was weird, with her charity, strange attitudes toward societal norms and ethereal eyes, but she was good. Bucky liked her, and he would protect her. 

| | | 

Such an occasion popped up six months into his stay with her. 

HYDRA, or so the files called them, was on the hunt for the Sceptre, and they knew that the Pieces went where Tony did, and Tony was in Malibu. 

Bucky had been informed there were six Stones overall, and humanity (specifically Tony) were in possession of three - Space, Reality and Mind. All three were also currently in Pieces - Space in the Tesseract, Mind in the Sceptre and Reality in the liquid garnet called the Aether that sloshed around some kind of Asgardian containment brick. 

He didn't claim to understand how this worked, or why space Hitler wanted them - he only lived with someone who did. 

These HYDRA guys apparently wanted at the Pieces, but their work was sloppy and easy to follow. Only one managed to get past him to the labs where they were housed. He was covered in blood when he rushed down the stairs, shiny metal arm all matted and in need of a clean. 

"Where is he?" He snapped, seeing Tony standing protective by their cases. 

"There." She pointed to the man, part of his face blown off. It was smouldering. 

"What the hell?" 

She gestured to the Sceptre. 

"Yeah, I guess if it can open a hole in the sky, why not a face?" He let himself relax. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." She put the Sceptre back in its case, pausing over the lock with a frown. She locked it anyway, moving on as though it never happened. "I'll have someone come to clean up the bodies. We need to get you cleaned up."

He grimaced when he looked down at himself, the blood and filth sticky and uncomfortable. "You're right about that."

She smiled. "I'm right about a lot of things."

* * *

Thor was in rough shape, arriving with a shipboard of refugees, all tattered and worn down. 

Tony assessed them with cold calculation in her eyes, Thor discussing the logistics of the Asgardian massacre with Steve and Sam. 

He ignored it, standing next to Tony. "What's on your mind?"

"Asgard, insofar as humanity is concerned, was the most technologically advanced civilization we knew of. Asgard was the most superior that Asgard knew of, even." She hummed, cocking her head as she looked at the travel and war-weary civilians shuffling around. "And Thanos crushed them."

"You don't think we have a chance." He summarized. 

"I didn't say that." She cocked her head the other way, doing that weird, grumbly-humming thing she did when she was thinking. "But from Thor, Loki and Valkyrie's stories, it appears that Thanos has less an army than a collection of slavering beasts, more scared of their master's whips than death. That's what makes him a destroyer, rather than conqueror."

"So what do we do?"

"The only way to fight monsters is with monsters." She smirked, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. 

"Where are you keeping Mecha-Cthulu, then?"

"You're familiar with Monarch." She answered, then walked away. 

| | | 

Monarch was a secret subdivision of the American government that had many international allies and collaborators. What they studied had been a mystery to Bucky, despite being allowed to be privy to their existence. 

"Giant monsters?" He raised an eyebrow. 

"Mega fauna." She corrected. "These beasts are super predators, prehistoric ones. Paleoanthrpologists and paleoarchaelogists have discovered cave paintings that depict the monsters fighting each other."

"How many?"

"Seventeen that we know of."

"That we know of."

She shrugged. "There could be more. Who knows?"

"Isn't that Monarch's job?"

She huffed. "Their mandate is research and containment. Several of the monsters have no reliable home to find, and others are frozen, cocooned or fossilized."

"How do you plan to weaponize them? Or do you just want to unleash them? Because I think that can go badly very easily."

"You're right, it can. There's no way for Monarch to know which Titans are on their side." 

He had a sinking feeling, nervous and unfettered. "What? What are you planning?"

She grinned. "You ask a lot of questions."

"I'm a squishy mortal. I want to know if there's a chance I'll be cut in half."

"There is, but not by me." She winked, but he wasn't reassured. Not by a long shot.

* * *

Thanos' army appeared sooner than they were expecting, coming to them through an opening in the sky. 

"Fuck me running." Sam swore over the comms, dodging another Chitauri gunship. "This is a thousand times worse than 2012."

"Yes, it is." Natasha replied flatly. 

Bucky was supposed to be up in the Tower, helping Tony stay safe and keep the Stones and their Pieces out of reach, but Tony had vanished. 

"Guys, we've got a problem." He reported. 

"Add it to the list." Clint replied. 

"Guys, Tony's gone. Entirely."

Steve's voice jumped a tad in hysteria. "What?"

"One job, Barnes." Clint sighed. 

"Fuck off, Barton." He hissed back. "There's no sign of forced entry and no blood, from her or an enemy combatant."

"Jesus." Steve slammed into something. "Fuck, what do we do, then?"

"That's what I'm asking you, buddy." The hairs along the back of his neck stood up and he crept over to the balcony, aware that shattered glass from a misplaced shot could eviscerate him, and peered over the edge. "Thor, buddy, are you the one that's a glowstick in front of the Tower?"

Thor sped past on a space eel. 

"Roger that." He felt the building of tension crawl up his back, gather in his neck, and watched as the blue glow a hundred storeys down was mobbed by the creatures Thanos had unleashed. 

A piercing cry went up, sounding something like a howl, but not mammalian, before the space where the glowstick was exploded and vaporized the creatures mobbing it. 

It was a little clearer now, and he pulled out his scope to view it better. 

It was humanoid, whatever it was, with human clothes falling off it in cinders. Female-adjecent, with long brown-black hair, gentle curves with pronounced but lean muscle mass and two chest mounds similar to in shape and size to breasts but lacking nipples. No visible body hair, but pulsing waves of blue light, seeming to form a bioluminscent pattern that got brighter the more it 'charged' whatever her attack was. 

Then it glanced over its shoulder at him with piercing blue eyes and a sharp grin. 

"Holy fuck." He almost dropped the scope off the building. 

"Did you find her, Buck?" Steve asked. 

"Yup." He managed to gasp out. "Stay out of the way of the glowstick."

"Glowstick?"

Another howl echoed before a long blast of light ripped down the street. 

"Oh."

He nodded, even though they couldn't see him, heart palpatating in his chest. His heart stopped altogether when he heard the answering _roar_ from the bay, long and loud enough to rattle the windows of the Tower. 

Out of the water emerged something that looked like a dinosaur's jock cousin;

Huge and spined, it had a square nose and thick legs, a massive tail disappearing into the water behind it. It was easily as tall as a skyscraper, and it looked pissed. 

The space eels turned to face it in challenge, hissing angrily, but the beast - the _monster_ , Bucky's brain' supplied - only snorted in derision and barred it's teeth back, arms tensing and stance already wide-set. 

And just like that, the fight was on.

* * *

When Hulk saw her down below, he cowered. Banner inside didn't understand, but the beast knew. Tony, down there, was a dangerous creature, capable of killing them. She was frightening, and she wasn't really fighting yet. 

She would kill anyone who stood in her way. 

Between breathing death and sending death out to greet, the one below was not to be trifled with. Not ever. 

When the one above came, Hulk only stuck around long enough to get Banner to a rooftop before retreating. 

_Banner stupid enough not to be afraid._ Hulk rumbled. _Banner face them._

"What the actual hell." He panted, coated in sweat that reeked of fear. 

Then he noticed the massive fuck-off dinosaur facing down the biotransport eels and crushing their faces between his jaws and he knew why Hulk, though not keen to engage Tony(?), was piss-terrified of the monster. 

| | | 

Tony's phone going off scared the living hell out of him. He rushed to pick it up, finding _Monarch Serizawa I._ on the caller ID.

"Hello?"

"Where is Stark? Who is this?"

"Barnes, her, uh, bodyguard." He went back to the balcony, wincing when the massive creature released another roar. 

"You can see him, can't you?" The man on the other end of the line breathed. "Gojira."

"Gojira?"

"You call him Godzilla. The King of the Monsters."

"Cool, he has a name. I take it that the 'Monarch' in your ID means you work for the government."

"Yes. Stark is part of our chain, and she would have been closest to his appearance. Where is she?"

"Funny you should ask." He peered over the edge of the railing, finding her shooting a blue mouth-laser down the street. "She's breathing lasers?"

Serizawa went quiet on the other side of the line. 

"You still there?"

"Tell me. About it all."

* * *

The news coverage of the invasion by the Mad Titan was scatter-shot and disjointed at best. No one knew where to look or what to focus on. 

Godzilla's appearance had drawn the cameras, with the way he killed the flying beasts and decimated swaths of the army with an irritated sweep of his tail. 

What they did not cover was Tony's personal rampage. It didn't cover the way she tore through ranks, smashed through lieutenants and breathed metaphorical fire down the throat of Thanos until his belly glowed a sickly blue and his eyes had melted. 

All that the cameras saw of her was her smaller beam, matching Godzilla's victorious ray into the sky. 

Serizawa would have done anything to be there, to see her in action. 

To know whether the Priestess from the cave paintings was real, was _her._


	2. The Atlanteans

She didn't know when the ritual had started, or when their god had come to them. She didn't know why he considered them worthy of protection, why he sought to care for them, even as aloof and distant as he could be. 

But mere days ago, the Priestess had succumbed to her wounds and died. He had been nearby since, laying with his head next to the altar. He looked to be sleeping, his gentle breaths warm on the skin of the priests and his massive eyes closed. 

Every eligible girl and woman desiring to serve him had come. She was the thirtieth to have arrived and for the last 45 hours, had listened to the screams and death throes of the unworthy candidates. Even if she had cowed out, she had nowhere to run with such shame. 

Besides, her fascination with him outweighed her fear. 

She's spent those empty hours walking his massive snout, her fingers idling in the crevasses of his skin. He's even opened an eye to glance at her, which had taken her breath away. 

But then it was her turn to attempt the rites, and that fear settled in her stomach, knotting into dread. 

| | |

She doesn't remember the rites very much, muddied by distance, time and the actual pain of the event, but she does know how it was supposed to go, and where her memories slot in. 

First comes the surgery. 

Stripped bare and cleaned before the rites, hair pulled back in tight braids, she was laid on a table in a small room. The surgeons entered and marked the spot with a blue dye on her skin. The restraints were then fashioned to her. 

Then they began to cut. 

Strapped down thoroughly, there was no way for her to escape the blades, and she doesn't remember a lot about what followed, only that when she managed to wake some fifteen hours later, there was a hole in her chest with a metal pipe sticking out. 

Second was the insertion. 

An artefact created by their ancestors contained a piece of the god's spines, alive with his electric furor, and both controlled and allowed access to its power. 

This artefact was to go into the socket in her chest. 

The artefact left her stumbling and dizzy, the rush of power so close to her heart and lungs it felt like her chest was being squeezed. Control over her limbs was also mostly shot, considering the blue lightning jumping off her skin on occasion. 

Despite being the easiest from her experience, this was the stage most died at. 

Lastly was the libation. 

She was never certain how they acquired it, but there was a large bowl that contained what proported to be the blood of the god, thick and dark but shining blue in the light. 

She was taken to the altar, where her arms were bound behind her back. The priests used another shard of his spines to make deep cuts into her neck and ribs, three to a set and one set to each side. They burned. She was then made to drink several long draughts of the blood. 

It was like drinking fire. 

She writhed in agony for days, the cuts in her skin were brands and her blood as lava. Her eyes felt like they were melting, and all her skin was too tight, too concealing but also stretched thin and ready to tear. Something was building inside her, and it wanted out. 

Even when she was finally able to snap the bonds, the only thing that gave her any relief was when she tipped her head back to face the sky and let it all out. 

Her breath ignited and all of that building pressure pushed outward, bursting out in a stream of blue incandescence. 

Next to her on the altar, the god watched her expulsion. He huffed, lumbered to a stand, and raised his own head. His spines lit up, body built to contain the power, then opened his maw and released it in answer, his massive enough to scatter the clouds. 

The priests ran up onto the altar, all shocked and awed at the display. 

"You have been accepted." The lead priest said to her, kneeling. "Welcome, Priestess."

Still panting and shrinking back into her own skin, she could do not much more than nod. 

The god lowered himself down again, staring directly at her. She stood, still shaking and sweating, and walked over to him. He huffed again, but put his snout against the precipice of the cliff. 

She hesitated, and almost missed that when he rumbled, she heard _Step._

She did so without thinking, falling when he rose again. For him, it was slow, but she had never moved so high so fast. She crawled over to where his muzzle met his head and curled up there. 

Before she knew it, she was asleep, soothed by the motion of his gait and the warmth of his scales. 

| | | 

She didn't know where he took her, only that they were on the edge of the water and he was mostly submerged, just his spines wrapping around the shoreline and his head resting on the beach. 

She realized quickly that the ritual had done more than tie her to the god, it had made her his demigoddess - she had taken on his essence.

So much of her had changed so shortly, and would continue to change and settle. The cuts the priests had made were now gills, and her reflection revealed that her eyes had shifted from their natural black to a fierce blue, bright enough to jump off her face. 

He watched her through her learning curve, merely observing her explorations. When she breathed flame on him accidentally, he only huffed and blinked lazily, the way mother lions did when their cubs bit at their ears. 

The oddest thing to adjust to was being able to understand his rumbling, to feel in her bones what he meant, to know her mind could put it to words if asked, but to feel it so much deeper than that. 

_Little creature,_ he said to her at last, _accept that you are you, and it will all feel the same. The more you think of you and me separate, the harder it will be._

So, in response, she laid down with him in the water, head on the sand and body mostly submerged. 

She woke up some days later, beneath the tide and breathing just fine. His pleased rumble made her insides squirm in pride. 

_Yes,_ he told her, _you were made for us._

| | | 

The priests could have sobbed in relief when she and he returned to the Temple, still naked and new. They had been afraid their god would be displeased, and might have taken her away to be rid of her. 

But alas, she was free of their chains, at the peak of their hierarchy, and she now knew why. 

"What does he command, Priestess? What does he require?" The suppliant priests prayed, kneeling at her feet. 

He had gone to sleep, as he was wont to do she'd found, and wanted for nothing. Nothing they could offer him, anyway. 

"Rest easy." She replied. "He slumbers."

They prayed more, whispering tones she could hear in great clarity. All of her was to be her God in woman's flesh, and to that chosen role she would commit. 

| | | 

She slammed the other woman to the ground, snapping the trident in half. 

"A weapon?" She disdained, feeling a laugh and power rise to her throat. "Against a fellow priestess? Your nerves must have been shot long before you made the mistake of landing on these shores."

"I have made my vows, I cannot lose!" The opposing Priestess spit. 

"Mere vows?" She cocked her head. "Child mine, what years have you?"

"Fifty-nine." The other answered smartly. "Age and wisdom on you, youngling."

She hummed, feeling her eyes brighten. "Indeed, my millennia have granted me wisdom."

The enemy's eyes widened. "The Atlantean."

"Indeed." She smiled, but it was saccharine and insincere. "May your bird grant you mercy for your service, not damnation for your failure."

"Wait-!"

The flame breath was overkill, but so rarely had she need to use it anymore. Her fame had surpassed her and their enemies quivered. Never had a Priestess lived so long, some eight thousand years. 

She left the corpse, diving into the sea. 

He was below, waiting for her. He was rarely challenged either - not many of his class remained. They chose often not to fight, but retire to separate corners of the earth. She swam to him, swifter than an arrow, and burrowed into her small gap in his spines, where she could shelter from his speed and not be thrown off. It was high up on his neck, and she could feel the thunder of his pulse every minute or so. She much enjoyed it here. 

| | | 

Whatever cataclysm had been summoned, it was not her god to have done it, and it was out of his control to stop it. 

They had not been there regardless. 

Atlantis sunk well beneath the waves, down, down, down. Light didn't reach it any longer, save only the molten heat of the magma, sloshing around them.

It was ruins now, but this was where they would remain. Deep in the heart of the world, in a city all their own, guarding memory of people long gone. 

_You outlive them all, it seems,_ he hummed thoughtfully, _stronger than any other they managed._

 _I was the last, I better have been the best._ Her reply was more sombre. It had fallen under her rule. Such a legacy. 

_The land rises and falls when it chooses._ He returned. _Such an island was not there during my youth. It is how it is to be._

 _I know. There are things beyond the control of even the gods._ She walked up the familiar steps, the water sluicing off her body easily, hair still pulled down by the trinkets of her position. _But they were my people._

_We are alike now. I, too, no longer have people._

She hummed, wandering over to rest against his nose. _Will you again?_

 _Unlikely. I have no desire to wait for them to perish again._ He rumbled thoughtfully, breathing gently. She hopped atop his nose, so much stronger since bonding with him, and laid down on between his eyes. _But I have you._

She let herself spark, running the current of power from the artefact right into his head. He only huffed in amusement, his own currents far from a ble to harm him. _And I you._

They both settled down on the darkened ruins of the altar, sunk much lower than it had been when it was above the waves, and sleep overcame them.

| | | 

They awoke together to the scent of fresh energy. It was washed out from travelling through the water, but it was there. And it was strong. 

_Look, if you're inclined._ He told her, shifting to make himself comfortable again. _But be careful. Who's to say how long it has been._

She didn't think it had been so long, but as she surfaced, she realized she was very, very wrong. The fish looked strange, and the land had clearly moved. What were shorelines had vanished and broken off, the entire geography of the world she knew overwritten by a lapse in time. Were people like what she had been even still alive? Was some ungodly thing, like that three-headed bastard dragon, now the source of the rampage? Vaguely, she wondered if the Lady Moth had survived, or the Lord Falcon. They had no such hole underwater to hide in, so perhaps they had met their doom as well. 

What would she do if that was so?

The island that the energy was coming from wasn't far, but as she got closer, she saw many floating vessels circling it. They were metal, and larger than entire towns on her own homeland had been, and full of humans in strange dress, speaking a strange language. She ducked below the waves then, approaching the island under the cover of the sickly-smelling water. It tastes of the energy she and he craved, but there was something wrong about it too, something unnatural. 

Something toxic. 

She came ashore, aghast at the destruction before her. This had clearly been a green island, but it was levelled. Corpses of animals and those of vegetation were laid out, flat to the ground, and made ash by some product other than fire. Whatever had struck - what the people on the vessels were observing - had clearly been on purpose. This wasn't natural. 

Some ways away, there was a jarring _boom_ that felt a thousand times worse than the first time she'd felt the ground shake under her god's treads, and that sickly spew of energy. 

She took a running dive back into the water, conscious of the way the linens she'd been wearing were disintegrated and coming apart under the force of her swimming. She surfaced at the other island not long after, finding it still sizzling and awash in the nearly-repulsive energy. She got to watch as trees fell, eaten alive by the very air, and animals not intended to live in the ocean ran for the safety of the sea, more content to drown than suffocate on air. 

She had to suppress her own power from rising, gorging as she was on the power. He might wish to feed on this, and perhaps it was also in the best interest of the land that he do so, but there were too many people. 

She left the island soon after, escaping the groups of ships that were circling too close to the ruins of the island, trying to accurately capture the devastation. 

| | |

It was less than a year later when they felt the resurgence of power, striking twice in quick succession. It sealed her mind that it was a weapon, not a phenomena. She rode with him up to the surface, skulking around the two cities on the peninsula which had been nearly levelled. The screams of the people dying horrible, slow deaths made her cringe away from the rejuvenating effect of the energy in the air and the water. She hid amongst his spines when the ships and the metal birds appeared around them, nervous about getting too close. She wished them away, but it was for naught. 

_They don't bother me, they shouldn't bother you._ He told her as they puttered along. _Humans are inquisitive creatures._

 _I'm well aware. But I don't know these people._ She replied. _And humans, before now, have not levelled a city._

 _It does usually take longer._ He amended, still swimming _. We'll eat, then leave._

| | |

She surfaced in cold water, her clothes long since fallen apart. Since the destruction of those two cities, she'd been unable get the new human world to leave her head. She'd left him in the ruins of her city and taken to the sea, learning from the edge of the water what these new societies were like. They were inquisitive, but warmongering. 

She took the time to learn their languages, and became aware of how to dodge their underwater tubes - _submarines -_ and deep-sea probes. Sometimes, she would admit, she set them off for fun. Two factions of submarines would rush out and circle each other, only for them to pick the sound out of the air that told them to pull back, that it was _fish_ that set it off, not another sub. 

There was a lot of sound in this new world, especially at night. So many were awake and wandering in the dark hours. Their little fires were stronger than the bonfires of old, certainly, but these _light bulbs_ were definitely exciting. She also wanted to understand electricity, power generation and how they created the energy she and her god fed on, _radiation_. 

She took to coming ashore and stealing clothes, pretending to be a _tourist_ \- some manner of foreign visitor, only there to obverse before leaving? It was a strange idea - and taking in all she could. Her last excursion with the human world involved her being a Priestess, so it was a hard-learned lesson that were were places other than homes were she wasn't allowed to enter. She had merely learned to sneak in, instead, since forcing her way in was met with a hail of metal shells - _bullets_ \- that were very obnoxious. She also wasn't there to kill people, only to understand them. 

That was how she found the frozen man, the one some leagues from the _plane_ he'd fallen out of. He was a hero of some sort (perhaps a Priest to a new god?) and there were a group of men determined to find him. He wasn't breathing, however, and she wasn't sure bringing him from the ice was a better idea than leaving him there. So, she had gone to his plane and taken the little cube that pulsed radiation for herself. Since she wasn't intent on returning to the City (her City), she would keep it on her to feed from. 

She was swimming up the Dnieper River, since swimming was still the fastest way to travel while going unnoticed, when she felt the rush of radiation just ahead of her. In her exploration of eastern Europe, she'd stopped at the town many a time, since the nuclear plant there made it very easy for her to feed. The Tesseract was too conspicuous sometimes, even for her with her own glowing eyes and chestpiece. 

Such was how she came upon the disaster of Chernobyl, and the first time she met Howard Stark.

* * *

* * *

"Tony?"

"Hmm?"

"I asked you a question."

She blinked to clear her head, smiling automatically at Steve's concerned frown. She's glad she left him in the ice for as long as she did. It wasn't his job to know how he surfaced, just that he had. "Repeat it, please?"

"How the hell did you summon that-" Steve turned to Ishiro Serizawa, who was staring unabashedly at her, "what did you call it?"

"Godzilla." The good doctor replied. 

"Well, I asked him to come because I would need the help. And he came." She replied. It was the truth. 

Ishiro laid a hand on Steve's shoulder when it looked like the Captain was about to lose it. "How do you know him? Are these powers of yours from him?"

She grinned at him. "There was a reason I always liked you. Yes and yes."

Serizawa looked like he wanted to jump the moon. "How long have you known him?"

"My dating is a little rusty, but somewhere in the vicinity of fifty thousand years."

"Fifty-" He sat back on his heels, astonished. "How?"

"It was part of a ritual, to be connected to the god, so we could know his wishes." She cocked her head. "To do so, one had to be like him to understand him. Thusly, I have become like him."

"What did the ritual entail?"

"I had to let the priests set this," She gestured to the artefact - called the Arc Reactor now - that was embedded in her sternum, "and then I had to drink his blood. Other than that, I've no idea. The ritual's secrets were never my concern. I was to be a vessel to pass on the god's will and to set my force against my nation's enemies."

"What civilization are you from?"

She leaned forward - it was always so fun to reveal something no one else knew about - with a crooked smile. "You now call it Atlantis."

Bucky laid his metal hand on her shoulder, pulling her back. She met his stern gaze, feeling a little bad about deceiving the man who was willing to put his life on the line for her. "You're telling me you're some ancient demigoddess from _Atlantis_?"

"Yes."

"How in the hell did you manage to marry Howard Stark's son in all that mess?"

"Gregory was asexual and had no inclinations to tell Howard so. He did, however, like my brain, and he asked me to do the favour of marrying him. I have no drive to sleep with humans anymore either, so I agreed. Howard died not long after, then Gregory got very severe cancer." She paused, thinking with a frown on her face. "That, in retrospect, may have been my fault."

"How so?" Bruce asked. 

"Like you, Doctor, I am radioactive." She didn't smile this time. "I had no plans to kill him, and I didn't consider that long-term exposure to me might do so."

"It explains why you're weird." Natasha said at length. "Your interest in SHIELD and Monarch too."

She shrugged. "If I wasn't naturally curious, I would never have become a Priestess in the first place, and then where would you be?"

"What do you know about the other Titans?" Serizawa asked. "Godzilla seems to be no active threat to us, but what about the others?"

She hummed thoughtfully. "Mothra is not interested in humans very much. She will be calm if you leave her to her own devices and cruel if you do not. Rodan is violent. Ghidorah is a bastard. He's unkillable, so do not disturb his resting place, even to study him. The MUTO is a parasite, and will seek out the others to feed off them. If it awakens, kill it."

"Why?"

"You enjoy having cities, don't you?" She raised an eyebrow. "It will seek out the Titans, and the Titans will fight it. Neither will take your infrastructure into account."

"I understand." He nodded. "If I may ask, where have you been all these years?"

"Atlantis sunk beneath the waves, so my god took me, and we followed it down. With the shifting of the earth, it is now mostly covered, under the bed of the ocean." She cocked her head at him again. "You'll die there. Between the magma, heat and radiation, anyone you send down will die."

"But you do not."

"Neither of us do. We were made for those conditions, he naturally, me artificially." She stood. "And before you ask, no, I've no intention of letting you study either of us."

"You're leaving." Bucky stated. 

She turned to him, reaching out to stroke down his cheek. "It seems in everyone's best interest. The last thing anyone here wants is for the rest of humanity to get scared and feel the need to strike first. As much as Godzilla is inclined to care for humans, if you turn on him, he will not hesitate to cull you. Unfortunately, neither could I stop him or be inclined to."

"You don't trust us." Clint deadpanned. 

" _You_ don't trust you." She replied harshly. "Why should I?"

"Do you make this decision or does he?" Serizawa asked. 

"He has no reason to stay." She turned to Pepper and Rhodey, who were staunchly silent in the back of the room. "Consider this my informing you that you're my inheritors."

Pepper's jaw hit the ground and Rhodey looked pained. 

"Try and find a job for Bucky, will you? Something physical, but not dangerous." She winked. "He's a good bodyguard."

Bucky's head snapped over to Pepper. "I think a prehistoric goddess is setting us up."

She patted his head. "I knew you were sharp, Barnes." She turned away from them, walking out over the blasted-out glass. "I didn't get to bid farewell to my Atlanteans, so nor shall I do so for you. I consider it an honour to have met you, and I will remember you all fondly."

Godzilla, still standing in the bay, turned his head in their direction and let out a sub-sonic hum that was still strong enough to rattle the interior glass. She released one of her own, a gentle smile coming to her face. 

"Tony-"

"In the event that I do meet you again," She interrupted, "you have my sincerest condolences."

Then she leapt off the building. 

She hit the ground running, sparking blue with each step. She climbed up the side of a ruined skyscraper, launching herself in a sapphire shot off the roof and landing gracefully on Godzilla's snout. The giant lizard huffed, turning back toward the bay and lowering himself into the water, disappearing into the ocean as easily and as suddenly as he came. 

"Well, shit." Bucky muttered. "How about that."


End file.
